


out of the rain that is your life's work

by LiviKate



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Drug Addiction, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Mentions of Panic Attacks, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 07:46:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11436345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiviKate/pseuds/LiviKate
Summary: He asked them when he’d be able to skate and they’d looked at him with tight smiles and told him to consider smaller goals to avoid disappointment.Or in which Otabek breaks his leg, breaks Yuri's heart, and then his own, all in the process of figuring out who he is and why he matters.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from Neil Hilborn's Otsego County
> 
> I've been feeling kinda unfounded in my career planning right now, so I wrote this to remind myself that even if everything you set yourself up to achieve doesn't happen, you can always pick up the pieces and do something else.

It was two months before the Olympics and their coaches said they had to stop talking. They claimed they were too distracting for one another and there was too much danger of them giving away important details of their routines. They said it wasn’t healthy for competition to be too close before such a large event. They both agreed, Otabek more gracefully than Yuri; not about the closeness, but about the distraction.

On their last, supervised, Skype call, before handing over their log in information and devices, Otabek smiled at his partner sadly.

“I love you,” he said simply, because it was true. Yuri smiled ruefully back, eyes flickering to where Viktor stood over his shoulder, and Otabek knew he wouldn’t say it back in front of him. That didn’t mean he didn’t feel it, and when Yuri looked straight into the camera, he knew he knew it too.

“Hey Altin,” Yuri said as they were about to sign off. “You’d better learn how to skate with a boner, because that’s what my routine is going to give you.” The last Otabek heard before Viktor slammed the laptop shut was Yuri’s musical laugh and he was still smiling when his screen went dark.

It was two months before the Olympics and Otabek held onto that sound, already longing for the next moment he’d get to hear it.

 

It was six weeks before the Olympics and Otabek was screaming on the ice. He’d been getting extra practice time, filling the rink whenever it wasn’t in use. The Kazakh hockey team was favored this year and they had an ongoing feud over who needed ice time more. As soon as they headed to the lockers, Otabek was out, sliding over rough ice.

He didn’t mind sharing the ice with the Zamboni, it was worth it to get the extra fifteen minutes it would take. He liked to skate behind it, putting the first marks on that flawless, wet expanse. He practiced footwork lazily to warm up, and when the machine had more than half the ice cleaned, he started his quads. He was premiering a new quad for this Olympics, the quad salchow that had eluded him his entire career thus far. He still only had about fifty percent success in landing it, and when he did, they were underrotated, always leading him to the left. But when he thought about Yuri’s face, watching him land it, knowing how hard he must’ve worked to achieve it, it was easy to work through the frustration.

He’d started picking up speed, having enough space between him and the Zamboni to really start flying, gathering up all the momentum he’d need to truly fling himself up in that barely controlled explosion. He kicked up, tucking himself in tight, counting his rotations in that thoughtless, rapid-fire way born of only muscle and repetition.

He landed and immediately knew it was wrong. Skate sideways, he went shooting to the left, off course and too fast. He would’ve had a chance for recover, if he’d waited for the ice to be cleaned. As it was, he flew out of the Zamboni’s track, and caught rough ice. His toe bit and skidded, twisting his lower leg to the right. Everything else went left.

There were shards of ice in his mouth, and he thought he was probably screaming. He could see the Zamboni still driving, could see his coach vaulting the wall, and several hockey players pointing. By all accounts, it should’ve been loud, thunderous. But Otabek couldn’t hear a thing, not even himself. All he had space for was the blinding ball of white hot pain that used to be his knee, feeling like it was ready to melt right through the ice and drown him.

It was six weeks before the Olympics and Otabek looked at his backwards angle of a leg and he kept screaming until he ran out of air.

 

It was five weeks before the Olympics and Otabek didn’t know when he’d last gotten a full night’s sleep. He was a light sleeper, and even Yuri’s sleepy murmurings and fidgeting could wake him up. Sleeping in the hospital was impossible. He still had needles in his arm, and his leg was up in traction.

The doctors here were liars and he hated them. They said things like “complete internal separation” with sympathetic smiles on their faces like they were announcing bad weather. They said the first surgery went well but he didn’t believe them. How could it have gone well if he was already scheduled for two more before he was even released? They said that his tibia needed to be replaced at the same time as blood supply was returned to parts of his lower leg, but that his tendons couldn’t be operated on in the same procedure. And that his ligaments would only recover when his knee was strong enough to stretch them, and that the nerve damage would likely be irreversible.

He asked them when he’d be able to skate and they’d looked at him with tight smiles and told him to consider smaller goals to avoid disappointment.

The drugs were good, though, and he was always on them. Sometimes, he got worried that his knee could possibly hurt as bad as it did while _on_ the medication. He didn’t think about what it would be like without it.

It was five weeks before the Olympics and he was losing days, hours spent staring at the hospital ceiling, drugged enough that he didn’t even feel them slipping by.

 

It was three weeks before the Olympics and after the third surgery he was back at home. Or, not exactly home, but out of the hospital. The doctor hadn’t approved him to return alone to his third floor walk-up in Almaty proper, so instead he was currently being driven to his sister’s cottage on the outskirts of the city where she lived with her fiancée.

He’d staunchly refused the wheelchair, glaring at the nurse as he tried to convince him of its benefits. He’d accepted the crutches that had been begrudgingly given to him, against all advice, and was not at all regretting his decision. Not even when the stem of the crutches knocked into his traction device, causing him to grunt in pain, a sharp burst forcing through the fog of drugs.

Aruzhan showed him to the guest room, hovering too close to his back, as if ready to catch him. He tried to lower himself gracefully onto the bed, but a crutch slipped and he collapsed backwards, jarring his metalwork. He hissed and watched a small trickle of blood slip from around one of the screws.

Every athlete has at one point worn a brace on the knee, and Otabek was familiar with even the more heavy-duty kinds. The ones that had metal supports down either side of the knee and thick straps around thigh and shin. But he had never seen anything like the monstrosity attached to his leg. Probably because once someone had something like this, they weren’t an athlete anymore.

A spider’s web of metal surrounded his knee. Bolted into femur and his brand new, steel tibia, the halos of titanium held what were essentially two completely separated pieces of a leg into a single line. It was explained that the weight of his lower leg would separate the repair done to his knee, so his thighbone had to support it. The skin around the screws was scabbed and ugly, and the tension caused a permanent ache.

“Do you need more medicine?” Aruzhan asked, holding the pill bottle as if it were actually meant to fix him, not just a bandage over the wound. He grunted and held out a hand, accepting the pain pills tapped into it, swallowing them dry and lying back. He needed to sleep.

It was three weeks before the Olympics, Otabek’s right leg was more metal than bone, and the extra weight drug him into dreamless sleep.

 

It was two weeks before the Olympics and Yuri hadn’t called.

Of course he hadn’t. He didn’t know. He had no way of knowing that Otabek hadn’t taken a step under his own power in a month. He didn’t have his phone to call Otabek and talk him through a panic attack when his pain medicine ran out and he had to live through the four hours it took his sister to get more. He didn’t have anyone to let him know that Otabek’s third surgery went well but they’d found a shard from his former tibia lodged in his calf muscle and infection all around it.

He didn’t know because why would he? Otabek was a distraction. Being with Otabek now would just make him worse. Would keep him from practice, from doing his best, from winning.

So when Aruzhan offered to get in touch with him, to tell Viktor what had happened, to go through Katsuki if she had to, Otabek told her not to.

Because it was two weeks before the Olympics and if Otabek couldn’t skate, Yuri would have to do well enough for both of them.

 

It was four days before the Olympics and Otabek’s phone finally rang.

It had been so long since his picture ID had filled Otabek’s screen that he just stared at it. Let it ring through until the picture went away. With the drugs making everything slower, he realized only after that that had meant Yuri was right on the other side of the screen, finally with his own phone back in his hands, and calling Otabek was probably the first thing he’d done.

He picked up his phone from the couch and swiped sideways to call him back.

“Beka!” Yuri shouted, answering after only a single ring. His voice sounded so good Otabek stopped breathing, not wanting any sound to keep him from hearing it. Aruzhan sat across from him in the small living room, her hands going still where she’d been petting the cat, having been watching him carefully since she’d heard his phone vibrate.

“Yura,” he answered, and his voice sounded foreign in his own ears. He realized he hadn’t spoken in days. Aruzhan held a hand over her mouth and her cat jumped off her lap, bored.

“What part of the village is Kazakhstan in?” Yuri asked, and Otabek could hear the bustle of an airport. He’d just landed. “If Russia’s is nicer, which it probably is, you should stay with me. I have my own room, perks of having a married loser for a coach.”

Otabek couldn’t speak. He both didn’t know what to say and didn’t want to miss a moment of hearing his voice. Tears welled in his eyes and he hadn’t cried since he’d been drug off the ice.

“Otabek?” he asked, apparently needing a response, but Otabek had already forgotten the question. “Are you still there?”

“I miss you so much,” Otabek croaked, and he hadn’t felt this poorly since his doctor renewed his prescription. Something in him ached and for the first time in weeks it wasn’t just his leg. His chest felt crumpled and heavy and he couldn’t tell if he was smiling or not.

“I missed you too, dumbass,” Yuri said, but he’d lowered his voice like he hadn’t wanted anyone else to hear, and Otabek barked out a laugh that didn’t quite fit in his mouth. “So where are you? I’ve seen Kazakh jackets, so I know you’re here somewhere.”

Whatever brief elation Otabek felt at having this lifeline thrown back to him was cut off abruptly as his slow moving-mind wrapped around what would have to come next. That heavy feeling in his chest hardened and sank and soured his stomach, already weak from not keeping anything down.

“I’m,” he said, stalling, scared. “I’m in Almaty.” He finally said after a pause that was too long.

“You’re in Almaty,” Yuri repeated dryly. “Well when are you getting here? Why didn’t you come with the team?”

“I’m not coming, Yura,” he said, voice quiet, but sounding booming in the silent cottage, under his sister’s eyes.

Yuri was quiet on the other end. Waiting for an explanation. But what could he say?

“You’re not coming?” Yuri repeated, giving his words back to him again, as if a second chance would change their meaning. “Why the fuck not?” He was scared, and his voice wavered with it, and Otabek knew that when the boy was really, really scared, every part of him shook. He’d held him during his grandfather’s heart surgery, he’d held his hand the first time he’d admitted he loved him, he’d drug him out of the apartment when Viktor and Katsuki had a screaming match. He’d felt him, felt the way his hands and legs and bottom lip always shook whenever he was well and truly scared. And Otabek knew what a little wobble could do. He looked at the ugly scars on his skin and he lied.

“I tweaked my knee, and my trainer says if I skate this week, I might do permanent damage.” The words were pretty and false, like plastic flowers, and they left a manufactured taste in his mouth. “So my coach pulled me.”

“Fuck,” Yuri breathed on the other line, and something in Otabek’s heart broke when he believed it all to easily. “I’m sorry, Beka, that sucks.”

“It could’ve been worse,” Otabek closed his eyes and lied through his teeth and his sister began to cry.

“So, you’re not competing, that sucks, but you’re still coming, right? To see me?”

It was a reasonable thing to assume. They hadn’t seen each other in months, ordinarily, Otabek wouldn’t let anything keep them apart, Yuri knew that. He wanted nothing more than to be standing by his side on the podium, but he would settle for clapping wildly at the boards.

“No,” he said, the word scraping out of his throat. “It would be too hard.”

“It’s a four hour flight from Almaty,” Yuri said, voice like tempered steel. “It’s Beijing, Otabek. I’m not asking you to come to fucking Salt Lake City.” He was angry, and he had a right to be. But Otabek couldn’t tell him that his doctor warned him that if he flew, the pressure could cause the blood clotted around his bolts to dislodge and block his heart or brain, or both. Otabek couldn’t tell him that he couldn’t stand on his crutches for more than thirty minutes and that walking was a chore. Otabek couldn’t tell him that he couldn’t legally travel with the amount of opioids he had to take to get through a week. He couldn’t tell him that he had biweekly doctors appointments that he couldn’t afford to miss if he ever wanted to skate again. If he ever wanted to walk again.

He couldn’t say any of that. So he fought the bile in his throat and kept lying.

“I don’t want to be there if I can’t skate,” was the best he could come up with, and he knew what Yuri would say before his furious voice crackled through the international connection.

“That’s really fucking selfish of you,” he hissed like an alley cat, and Otabek could imagine his hackles raised, teeth bared, eyes bright with hurt and pain and embarrassed fury.

“I know,” he said, but the line had already died, a single tone stillness that sounded too much like the coldness of the hospital for him to keep listening to.

It was quiet in Kazakhstan and Otabek just stared at his phone, a dead bird in his hand that once sung so sweetly to him. His sister opened her mouth to say something but he just held out his hand instead.

“Pills?” he asked, dropping his phone from his limp hand and not caring when it landed on the floor not the couch.

“You’re not due for more for another few hours,” she said, getting up and coming to his side.

“Zhan, please,” he whispered. “It hurts.” She dropped a few more into his palm and helped him back to his room. She told him dinner would be ready in a few hours, as if she actually thought he was going to leave his bed again today.

It was four days before the Olympics and the words “it could’ve been worse” were circling through his head because no, it couldn’t have, and Yuri wasn’t even here to hold his hand while he cried.

 

It was the day of the Olympics. Men’s singles, the only event that meant anything, the rest of the week didn’t matter, this day out of all of them, this event, these skaters, _this_ was the Olympics to him.

He missed the first two routines, having denied Aruzhan’s fiancée’s help in getting out of the bathtub, promising that he could do it himself. It had taken a long time, and something popped menacingly in his hip and still she was there waiting outside the doorway, ten minutes later, with a palmful of pills and an anxious smile on her face.

Otabek took half and pocketed the other, not wanting to be too out of it to appreciate the art. He made it to the couch, dry and dressed, just in time for Leo’s routine. It was good, he was growing a lot. Still, Otabek had to look away when the camera showed Guang Hong waiting in the kiss and cry, applauding loudly, supporting his boyfriend in a way that Otabek couldn’t.

“Do you want something to eat?” Sezim asked and he said no. He was never hungry anymore. He thought idly that that was probably better than getting fat, though it wouldn’t matter either way, not if he could never skate again.

He closed his eyes and thought about nothing until she nudged his arm, whispering that Yuri was up next.

The music was one of his own mixes, and he could see plainly that Yuri resented that now. He could read the choreography easily, could see how flirtatious and playful the piece was supposed to be, something unlike Yuri’s usual style enough to garner appreciation and shock. But the first half was not playful, because Yuri was not. Otabek could see it in the tight hold of his brows and the bend in his knee before a jump, the sharpness of his wrists. There was nothing playful about the way he glared at the ice, every move was aggressive and spiteful and barbed.

By the middle of the technically flawless routine, Yuri began to loosen, closing his eyes and letting himself be sucked into the music and the memories of hard training hours. He played the part of the flirt, putting the extra swing in his hips and the lightness to his steps. The second half was sexy and sweet and a little dangerous and Otabek would’ve loved to see the whole piece like that. But it was too little too late, and Otabek knew that his performance at the beginning would affect his score.

He laid down on the couch as soon as the music ended and told Sezim to wake him when the medals were being awarded. She did, and he wished she hadn’t, because the look in Yuri’s eyes when they slipped a silver medal over his neck was as dead and cold as Otabek had felt all these weeks. It was his fault. Even from Almaty, he was able to poison Yuri’s performance. He made him worse. Even without telling him the truth, he’d made him worse and Otabek began to realize that that would become the new normal for him.

It was the day of the Olympics and Otabek took a dose and a half because suddenly the pain felt a lot deeper.

 

It was three days after the Olympics and Otabek was only awake because he had a doctor’s appointment to get his traction device removed.

He had a new physical therapist, one who had a bright smile and short hair and a sharp wit. Her name was Sabine, and she told him he had to stay positive, and that his body would give up as soon as he did. He told her that his body had given up the moment his leg decided it didn’t want to be a leg anymore. She punched him in the arm, hard enough to hurt and told him to stop being a pussy and asked if he wanted to walk again. He liked her, just a little. She reminded him of someone.

Someone who hadn’t called. Someone who was holding a grudge, someone who didn’t know the truth. And he never would, Otabek had decided. He wouldn’t tell Yuri the truth about him. There was no point. Either Yuri would abandon his career to come take care of him, or he wouldn’t and he’d leave Otabek heartbroken and alone. Either way, they wouldn’t be happy, and one of them would always resent the other.

So Otabek planned excuses for when Yuri called next, reasons why they couldn’t see each other, reasons why they couldn’t Skype or visit. He told himself that as soon as he could walk, he’d fly to Russia. He just needed to keep Yuri away until then.

It was three days after the Olympics and Otabek left physical therapy covered in sweat, with a new, better ache in his leg, and the smallest smile hiding in the corners of his mouth.

 

It was one week after the Olympics and Yuri called. The Skype call was immediately decline, and he called him back with a regular audio call, not willing to let Yuri see him as he was. Yuri picked up and it was quiet for a few breaths, both unsure how to start.

“I’m tired of being mad at you,” Yuri finally said, and Otabek didn’t know what time it was but he was pretty sure it was late.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because he was and that was all he knew how to say.

“I figured you probably are. I mostly just started to miss you again more than I wanted to hate you, so, yeah.”

“I miss you, too,” Otabek said, and the words felt right in his mouth but hollow in his chest. Of course he missed him, but that didn’t change anything.

“It’s been a really long time since we’ve seen each other,” Yuri said.

“I know,” and already this was the longest conversation Otabek had had in months.

“You should come to Russia,” Yuri said, forgiveness clear in his voice, hopeful youth and eagerness. Otabek paused, trying to remember the lie he had planned for this. He rubbed one hand over his eyes. It was hard to think, he always doubled his pain pills before he went to bed.

“I can’t,” he said after a while. “I have a wedding to go to, my cousin’s.” It was true. He wasn’t going, because he couldn’t stand, but there would be an Altin wedding this month.

“I’ll come to you,’ Yuri said too quickly, faster than Otabek could remember the next set of half-truths. “I can keep you company at the wedding, I know you’re not super close with any of your cousins, and I bet Zhan and Sezim are going to be so gross and romantic together, weddings always do that to engaged people, it’s gross.”

“No,” Otabek said, trying to cut him off, “Don’t come.”

“You don’t want me there?” Yuri asked, after a beat of shocked silence.

“It’ll be a traditional ceremony, all in Kazakh, you wouldn’t understand it.”

“I’d still get to see you,” and for the first time, Yuri was the one that sounded vulnerable and weak.

“It’s fine, we can try again in a couple weeks,” Otabek said with finality, fighting a yawn as the drugs tried to do their job and pull him under. Yuri was quiet and Otabek started to drift off.

“It must be easier for you,” the Russian spat suddenly, taking Otabek by surprise. “You got to see me on TV, at the _Olympics,_ where I won a silver medal. Which you didn’t even send me a ‘congratulations’ text for, by the way. No one was filming you, sitting on your ass in Almaty feeling sorry for yourself. So I’m sorry if I want to see my boyfriend, but it’s been a lot longer for me.”

He hung up before Otabek could tell him he loved him, and he swallowed one last pill so he wouldn’t have to feel sad about that.

It was one week after the Olympics and sleeping was the only thing Otabek was good at anymore.

 

It was two weeks after the Olympics and Otabek left physical therapy sweaty and furious. There was so much that he _couldn’t do_. And it wasn’t for lack of trying, or lack of motivation. He took the bare minimum of pills, knowing they made him cloudy and apathetic, and he knew he needed energy to work hard. But no matter how hard he worked, if he leaned too much weight in the wrong direction, his knee would buckle and there wasn’t anything he could do to fix it.

Sabine said it wasn’t about “fixing” his limitations; it was about accepting them and working within them. Otabek had never been good at that, he’d always been ready to struggle through. Where other people had had natural talent, he’d had determination and stubborn-headedness. And now he’d hit a wall and there was no way around it.

He’d gotten an extra prescription and filled it without telling his sister. This one he would keep for when she was being obnoxious about counting pills and hours, and making him eat first, and making him get out of bed. She was being a bitch about it, treating him like a fucking child, like she forgot he was the older one. Sabine had suggested anti-depressants and he’d told her to go fuck herself. It’d be another bottle of pills his sister could make him jump through hoops for like a show dog. Of course, telling Sabine to go fuck herself earned him twenty one-legged pushups, and he just snarled more as she counted them obnoxiously.

On the way back to Aruzhan’s house, Otabek refused to engage in conversation, stewing over his failures at therapy, frustrated at his achingly slow progress. He hobbled away from her as soon as the car stopped, the forty minute commute out of the city long enough to make his overworked knee feel stiff and angry again. She followed him, trying to talk about something she thought was important, until he shut the bathroom door in her face. She shouted that she loved him through the door and then finally walked away. It didn’t make Otabek feel better at all.

He turned on the taps and sunk into the tub, taking some pills and lying there while it filled up. The screw holes circling his calf and thigh were finally healed, and the incision from the last surgery had closed in a thick, red line of scar tissue, so he was able to lift his leg up and drop it in the water with him for the first time since the injury. He leaned back as the water turned his tan skin pink, watching the level rise on his thighs.

He was sure his left thigh was smaller, from lack of exercise, no time spent in the gym or on the ice, muscle going soft. But his right thigh. His right leg didn’t even look like it belonged to the same body. His foot hadn’t touched the ground in so long, his muscles were withered, no matter how much physical therapy he did. And the scars were thick over his knee, wrapping above and around, no man’s land between.

He thought about what Yuri would say, when he finally saw the scars. If he’d want to touch them or wouldn’t be able to look at them, like Otabek couldn’t. He stopped thinking about it, because it might not matter. Yuri might never see them, if therapy kept going like it did that day. If Otabek couldn’t walk, he’d never be able to keep up with that blond ice storm. It was all starting to matter less and less.

It was two weeks after the Olympics and Otabek took another handful of pills and sunk down into the water until only his nose was safe from boiling.

 

It was three weeks after the Olympics and Yuri called him in the middle of the day. He was drug out of a heavily medically induced sleep by the ring tone, a tiger roaring, and when he finally fumbled his screen into view, he saw that it was the third time Yuri had called.

“Yura?” he answered, unused to speaking again, as it had been a few days since his last physical therapy appointment.

“Fuck, Beka, hey,” he said, sounding out of breath.

“What time is it?”

“Russian, Beka, speak Russian,” Yuri panted and Otabek’s slow moving brain wanted baldy to drift back to sleep. “You know I think it’s sexy when speak Kazakh, but I can’t understand you.”

“I was sleeping,” Otabek said, this time in Russian, trying not to be annoyed. It had been a long time since Yuri had called, the boy held grudges like backbends, pushing through even when they started to hurt.

“What are you wearing?” Yuri asked, breathing into the line.

“Yura, what are you doing?” Otabek asked, one arm tossed over his eyes.

“Come on, Beka, please? Just talk to me for a little bit. I need it. I miss your voice,” Yuri whined, and if Otabek listened hard, he could hear slick sounds through the line. “It’s been months, don’t you miss me?”

I, uh, yeah,” Otabek said, slowly. “Of course I miss you.”

“Why’d you say it like that?” Yuri pouted, and Otabek could imagine the way his fat bottom lip would poke out. He tried to find anything like desire inside himself, but he couldn’t. Only numbness.

“Like what?” he asked, frustrated, not thinking fast enough. “I miss you.”

“So talk to me, get me off,” Yuri pleaded.

“I don’t want to,” Otabek said, too honestly. “I can’t.”

“Goddammit, Otabek,” Yuri cursed at him, suddenly furious, so angry Otabek wondered if he’d even been aroused in the first place. “Is there someone else?”

“What?” Otabek asked, trying to sit up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You never call me, you never open my snapchats, you don’t want to see me and you won’t fucking _talk to me_ ,” Yuri cried, despairing, spiraling so rapidly Otabek couldn’t keep up. “Are you fucking someone else? What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Yura,” Otabek said, haltingly. “It’s just, I just,” he stalled, and Yuri took it as a confession.

“It was only _two months_ , Otabek,” Yuri screamed at him. “Two months! You were supposed to be training, not fucking other people. How could you do that?”

“Yura, I wish I could tell you,” he said, stuttering, because there was so much he couldn’t say. He couldn’t tell him that he hadn’t even touched _himself_ since the accident, that he couldn’t even imagine having sex, couldn’t even pretend to want it.

“Fucking save it,” Yuri hissed at him. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t ever want to hear from you again.”

“Yuri, wait,” Otabek said, the heel of his hand pressing into his eyes until green spots appeared in the darkness.

“Fuck you, Altin,” Yuri said, and when he sniffed Otabek knew he was crying. The line went dead and when he called back, his number couldn’t be reached. He’d already been blocked.

Otabek fell back against his pillows, drug one over his face and screamed. Every part of him hurt. His chest felt caved in, his head felt too small, and his lungs were tight like he’d just come out of surgery again. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe enough to scream. He recognized, distantly, that he was panicking. And there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t call Yuri back and ask him to talk him down, to listen to his soothing voice tell him everything was going to be okay, because it wasn’t, and it never would be, and the worst part was that it wasn’t even fucking surprising anymore.

It was foolish of him, really, to think that he’d be able to keep him. That Yuri would stick around, would want to be part of his endless shitshow, his cycle of surgery after brutal surgery, his ugly scars and weak body, his hands shaking from too much or too little of the drugs that he couldn’t stop taking.

He fumbled for his bottle now, the one he kept behind Yuri’s picture on his bedside table. He shook some pills into his hands, and then a few more, and then more than that, and he took them all, coughing when they got stuck in his throat, dry from gasping for air he didn’t deserve. He choked them down and stared at the ceiling until he didn’t see anything anymore.

It was three weeks after the Olympics and instead of feeling heartbreak, Otabek felt nothing at all and he couldn’t tell which was worse.

 

It was three weeks and twenty hours after the Olympics and Otabek was still asleep. He finally woke up to Aruzhan standing over him with an overturned mixing bowl and water all over his face.

“What the fuck?” He sputtered, sitting up so fast that she stumbled back, bowl clattering to the wood floor jarringly.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Otabek?” she screamed at him.

“I was asleep,” he protested. Surely he wasn’t doing anything wrong in his sleep.

“You’ve been asleep for a whole day!” she shrieked. “You wouldn’t wake up! There was puke on your face, and I don’t even know how long you’ve been like this. And then I find _this_ ,” she throws the empty bottle at his head hard enough for it to bounce off. “What the fuck were you trying to do?”

“Nothing, I was just trying to sleep,” Otabek protested, wiping his mouth and feeling a thin trickle of bile crusted onto his cheek. He looked between the yellow stain on his pillow and the tears bursting onto his sister’s cheeks. Sezim was watching from the doorway, hand clenched tight around her phone, the other wrapped around herself.

“You don’t take a bottle of pills just to sleep, you asshole,” she said, hands balled into fists and Otabek knew she was barely holding back from shoving him, like they used to do when they were kids.

“It wasn’t a whole bottle,” he defended, shoulders hunched against her hostility and anxiety, his head still feeling fuzzy, his heart still beating too slowly.

“How many was it?” she asked, scrambling to pick up the bottle again from the bed, reading the label, franticly wiping tears out of her eyes.

“I didn’t count them,” he said, shrugging, pulling the edge of his shirt up to wipe over his wet face. When he looked back, she was even more livid.

“You don’t count them?” she hissed. “This is why _I’m_ supposed to have them, why _you_ shouldn’t have them. You just sit around in your drugged up haze all day, so fucking out of it you don’t even count how many pills you put in your mouth.”

“I can’t walk,” he screamed back at her, fury in every word. “Of course I sit around all day, I can’t fucking walk”

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” she said, snatching a pillow from behind his back just to throw it at his face. “Your physical therapist tells me how well you do in training.” Aruzhan’s eyes were wet with angry tears. “She has to tell me because you don’t fucking talk to me anymore. I know you don’t take this many pills for therapy, so don’t fucking tell me you _need_ it. You _like_ it, because it means you don’t have to be sad all the time. You can just feel nothing instead.”

“I do need it,” he said, very aware of the pain radiating out from his knee. “I broke every part of my knee, it fucking hurts.”

“You think I don’t know it hurts?” she challenged, stepping into his space, looming over him where he sat and making him feel very small. “I see everyday how much it hurts you, when you take your pills and fucking shut down, because you’d rather feel nothing at all.” She raised her hands and for one, panicked second, he thought she might slap him. But she cupped his face in her hands, hands that trembled with fear. “I know it hurts. But don’t you think maybe you should feel it? Just for once, could you maybe just try? Please, stop doing this. Stop numbing yourself to the world and actually _feel something again._ ”

And because it had been seventeen hours since he last took any medication, he did feel it. He felt the shaking of his sister’s hands as they held his cheeks so gently, even though she was so angry. He felt the throbbing and the stiffness in his knee and the tightness of his skin. He felt the crater sized hole in his heart where he used to keep everything he hoped he might have in his future with Yuri. He felt himself shaking, just as scared and heartbroken as he’d ever been, all at once.

He leaned his cheek into his sister’s hand and let a tear slip free.

“Yuri broke up with me,” he said, wrapping one, weak, shaking hand up around her wrist.

“Can you blame him?” she asked, and it hurt. She might be right, but it hurt, and the pain was sharp like a muscle spams in his ribs. “You haven’t been a person, Beks, and he doesn’t know why.”

“Fuck,” Otabek breathed, letting his head drop, hanging between his shoulders.

“You can’t keep doing this,” she whispered down to him, kneeling, holding the sides of his neck in hands that were still shaking. “You almost died.” Her voice wavered. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, because it was true.

“No more drugs,” Aruzhan said desperately. “You can’t keep doing this. You’re not getting better, they’re making you worse. That’s what made you like this. Not the knee, not the surgeries, it’s these fucking pills.” She was crying again, and Otabek thought that was okay because he was, too.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” She was right, and he knew it. He’d been medicating pain that wasn’t purely physical anymore, and it kept him from doing things like staying awake for more than eight hours, and picking up his phone when his partner texted, and being able to _speak_ when he did pick up a call. It wasn’t the accident that had done this to him. He’d done it to himself.

“You’re right,” he said, again, wiping his face. “No more drugs.”

“It’ll be hard,” Sezim said from the doorway, looking nervously at the mess of scars decorating his knee. “There will still be pain. And withdrawal. It’s been a long time, Beks.”

“I know,” he said to his hands, folded around his phone in his lap, staring at the picture of Yuri he had set as his wallpaper. “But Yuri is gone. I want to feel sad about that.” He looked up at Aruzhan, feeling lost, but at least it was something. “It feels right, to be sad about it. I don’t want to feel nothing anymore.”

Aruzhan pulled him into a hug, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and holding him tightly to her as he cried.

It was three weeks and one day after the Olympics and Otabek started feeling again, even if the first thing was misery.

 

It was four weeks after the Olympics and the worst of the withdrawal was still keeping him up at night. Sweating, nausea, constant shaking and the headaches, it all kept him from sleeping, kept him craving. Thinking of Yuri made it worse, going to physical therapy made it worse, talking to his family made it worse, but for all those reasons he was getting better.

He told Sabine and she was so proud of him she punched him in the arm and slapped him upside the head. He still liked her.

He told his new Narcotics Anonymous group and they welcomed him. One grizzled old man looked at him and asked what a young kid like him was doing in a place like this. Otabek pulled the leg of his sweats up and showed him the gnarled mess of his knee, still pink in places from the last surgery. The man stared, and then pulled up his sleeve to show a knot of scars clinging around his elbow. They nodded at each other and Otabek felt understood in a way that his sister and his therapist just couldn’t offer.

It was four weeks after the Olympics and every day sucked, but at least he had something to feel.

 

It was five weeks after the Olympics and he was down to one crutch, instead of two, and had a prescription for anti-depressants in his pocket.

He finally signed back onto his social media accounts and the first picture he posted was of a swan gliding through icy water. Which he took while on a walk. It felt weird to wear shoes again, and he still wasn’t used to walking with the cane, but the feeling of moving on his own two legs again was something that, after a while, he didn’t think he’d get back. Even though it was too cold for his metal joint, he went on walks whenever he could.

He thought of Yuri. Thought of his promise to himself; that his first steps would be towards Russia, towards Yuri. But that’s not where he went, not now. He still laid awake at night, knowing that Yuri thought he’d found someone else, and everything in him called out to his fingertips to tell him that that wasn’t true, that there would never be anyone else. But. He wasn’t sure there was a _him,_ yet. That maybe Yuri was right, he did find someone else, and it was a different Otabek.

An Otabek who walked with a limp now. An Otabek who mixed softer songs and cooked more. An Otabek who had a future ahead of him that was unplanned, but for the first time since he was eleven, that wasn’t scary, it was just a space for possibilities. He was different. He wasn’t always happy about it, but he was different.

It was five weeks after the Olympics and Otabek decided that when he found Yuri and explained to him the whole truth, he would need to know who he was.

 

It was seven weeks after the Olympics and he was moving back into his apartment. Aruzhan was still on speed dial, and his younger brother was coming to stay with him for a couple days. He was thirteen and didn’t care that Otabek couldn’t walk very fast. He just wanted to sit on the couch and play video games, and call his brother an old man whenever he lost. Otabek thought that was okay.

The cane still didn’t feel natural in his hand, but his therapist said that was a good sign, it meant he wouldn’t be using it for the rest of his life.

That is, his _physical_ therapist said that to him. His other therapist was there to listen, not to work him until he collapsed and then send him home to do it again. No, this therapist talked to him about being more than an athlete, about finding meaning in life that wasn’t based on tangible things, about life after the ice. And about Yuri. Always about Yuri.

About how he wanted so badly to reach out, to make up for all the lies he told with every truth that he knew to be true, but that he couldn’t. They talked about his feelings of incompleteness when he thought of a future without Yuri, and they talked about how miserable it made him that there was no future _with_ Yuri. Otabek told her that he didn’t think he had a place in Yuri’s world anymore, he told her about how he worried that Yuri wouldn’t want him like this, wouldn’t recognize him. There were still some days he had trouble recognizing himself.

He had another surgery, but he had discussed his addiction with his doctors and they promised they could accommodate him. He had been nervous going in, but they offered low dose treatments of a very different type of pain medication, an opioid antagonist that wouldn’t cripple his progress. He stayed in the hospital until he was well enough to leave without medication. The scars stopped being quite so ugly when he stopped being quite so empty. They felt more like medals now, like something he earned every time he fought to keep working.

It still hurt, there was still so much pain, and some days he couldn’t leave his bed. But he felt it. He felt it, and it was real, and he was living again, even if it wasn’t anything like he had planned.

It was seven weeks after the Olympics and Otabek was finally a person again.

 

It was two months after the Olympics and Otabek wrote the announcement his coach would give at the press conference.

He was very specific that it must be delivered in Kazakh. It was, after all, Kazakhstan that he was apologizing to. His coach had fought him on parts of it, but ultimately promised to do whatever he said. He watched the live stream from his apartment, just to be sure that they did it justice.

He watched as they straightened their blazer and tapped the mic. It was a small gathering at his home rink, just enough Kazakh sports news teams there to cover their athletes. He listened as his coach announced his retirement, glossing over the details of his injury and focusing on his hope that he had done enough to make his country proud.

More hands rose than he thought, and he watched with bated breath as his coach took questions.

“Will Otabek Altin ever return to the ice?” was the first one, and his coach smiled a small, tight smile.

“We are focusing on recovering a full range of motion, for now,” they said and even more hands rose. Otabek’s hands flexed around his cane, where he liked to rest it over his knees, the line of it getting more and more parallel to the ground everyday as his legs got strong again.

“What will he do next?”

“He is a popular DJ around Almaty and would like to start producing music,” his coach answered, a fact they were quite proud of and had been nothing but supportive of.

“Does this have anything to do with the recent posts Yuri Plisetsky has made on social media? Is their relationship over?”

Otabek’s cheeks went pale and he was glad he hadn’t let his family come over to watch with him. He’d shattered his phone in the worst of the withdrawals after seeing Yuri post a picture of himself draped over another boy, so Zhan had taken all of Yuri’s accounts off of his social media, so he wouldn’t see anything else. He hadn’t thought it would come up. Clearly, his coach hadn’t either. They took a moment to frame their thoughts, and Otabek held his breath as he waited to hear the answer, feeling as though he were as clueless as the reporter.

“They are, unfortunately, broken up, yes,” they answered delicately.

“Did Yuri Plisetsky dump him because he couldn’t handle the baggage of a career-ending injury?” another reported interjected.

“No, certainly not,” his coach answered sharply. “Otabek wanted to focus on getting better and he didn’t want Yuri to be distracted from his career. That is all.” The reporters started buzzing but they kept going. “Otabek still supports his friends in Russia and has great love for them.” Otabek swallowed hard and blinked through the tears in his eyes. He cried easier since stopping the drugs. “He hopes that his fans will choose to support Yuri, as he still does.” They looked directly into a camera. “And he does, he still, truly, does.” Otabek closed the laptop, blushing fiercely because it was embarrassing and it was true.

It was two months after the Olympics, and Otabek’s career as an international athlete was officially over.

 

It was two months and two days after the Olympics and there was a very angry human banging on his door.

Otabek made his slow (but every day improving) way to the door, cane moving with his right leg. He opened it carefully, wishing it had a peephole. He pulled it open only a few inches and peered out.

“ _You fucking son of a bitch,_ ” he heard before two very familiar hands were pressing flat to the door and shoving it the rest of the way open.

Four months ago, Otabek probably would’ve just stumbled back. But the Otabek behind the door today _fell_ , the door crashing into his good leg and sending him collapsing heavily to the floor, cane clattering out from under him.

“Holy fuck, Beka, are you okay?” he asked, immediately kneeling in front of him, moving with a grace that Otabek’s memory couldn’t ever have truly done justice.

“Yura,” he breathed, wondering fleetingly if he had hit his head and was currently dreaming of an angel while burglars robbed him of all his earthly possessions.

“Fuck, oh my god, I’m so sorry,” he said, anger forgotten entirely, snow-pale hands landing gently on him, on his neck and his thigh. “I’m so sorry.” And then Otabek was sure he was dreaming because Yuri Plisetsky never apologized.

“I’m dreaming,” he said it out loud, even as he wrapped his hand around the hand tenderly touching his neck. He held it tightly and it felt so real.

“You dream of getting knocked on your ass?”

“By you? All the time,” he answered with a smile, trying for charming. It turned to a grimace partway through as the throb of his knee became impossible to ignore. “It usually hurts less, though,” he admitted.

“Here, let me help you up,” Yuri murmured, grabbing him firmly by an arm and helping haul him to his feet. He walked him carefully to the couch, before turning back to close the front door.

Otabek admired him while his back was turned. His hair was longer than it had been four months ago, which made sense. He was glad he hadn’t cut it off in a post-break up moment of impulse. He wore what Otabek immediately recognized as his lucky backpack and he realized in that moment that this wasn’t a dream and that Yuri Plisetsky, love of his life, was in his apartment again, with clothes spilling out of his lucky backpack.

“Why’re you here?” he asked, breathlessly, when Yuri came back to sit next to him.

“I saw your press conference,” he said, staring at the cane still lying on the ground near the door. “I had no idea it would be so bad. You said you just tweaked it. And then your couch announces your retirement?” He looked back at Otabek and angry confusion was plain on his face. “You lied to me.”

And Otabek had, about so many things, and he didn’t know which was the worst in Yuri’s mind, but he knew which one kept him up every night since.

“I never cheated on you,” he said firmly, insistently, needing him to know. He hated that Yuri ever had to think that, that he had given him cause to think that. “When you called, I was on so much pain medication that I couldn’t explain myself. I never wanted you to think that. I was such a mess then, I couldn’t even touch myself. I could never be with anyone but you. I would never do that to you. I couldn’t.” Otabek held Yuri’s green gaze for as long as he would let him, and he would be perfectly content if that meant they sat there for the rest of their lives.

“What happened? Why wouldn’t you tell me?” The anger was back, clenching up in his fists and gritting his teeth. “Did you think I would leave you? Like that reporter said?”

“No,” Otabek rushed to say, but that wasn’t entirely true and he was tired of lying. “Yes, sometimes. I didn’t know what you would do. As far as I saw it, even if you didn’t leave me, there was no happy ending.” It was hard to explain it logically, just like it was hard to explain depression. “I couldn’t tell you, not when it happened. You were training, the Olympics were in just a few weeks, I knew you wouldn’t be able to focus if you knew I was in the hospital, in and out of surgeries.”

“How many?” Yuri asked, hands flexing around his arms where he gripped onto himself tightly

“Four,” he said, watching Yuri’s hands move, wishing they were curled around his. “There will be more.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Yuri snarled, arms crossed over his chest. “What about after? I medalled at the Olympics, I could’ve taken a break afterwards.”

“You don’t know how to take breaks,” Otabek told him with a shallow smirk. Yuri stared at him harshly, silently demanding a true answer. Otabek sighed. He didn’t deserve half-truths and jokes. He deserved to know everything. “I was in a really bad place, Yura, and I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

“I don’t care about whether or not you can skate, I care about _you_ ,” he insisted, and if his tone had been sweet instead of furious, Otabek would’ve been sure it was a dream after all.

“It wasn’t just my leg,” he said, sinking back into the couch, into himself. When he’d lain awake at night, thinking of all the things he wanted to say to Yuri when he saw him again, this was always the worst to imagine. “I was sick, after the accident,” he managed before he was interrupted.

“You should’ve come to Russia,” he barked, too loudly. “We have the best doctors, I would’ve made sure you saw the top surgeons in the field.”

“It wasn’t the doctors, the doctors here are fine,” Otabek said, picking at the knee of his sweats, glad they covered the scars. “It was the drugs. I had a problem with the drugs.”

“Were you allergic?” Yuri asked, and it broke Otabek’s heart how much faith he had in him.

“No, Yuri, I was an addict.” He forced himself to meet his gaze, to face the judgment, whatever it might be. Everyone in his life so far had been so forgiving, and his therapist had told him he needed to stop seeking out punishment for something that wasn’t his fault, but if anyone would make him crumple in shame, it would be Yuri. “That’s why I never called. That’s why I barely spoke, why I couldn’t text. That’s why I couldn’t…” he made a vague hand gesture, face heating in shame every time he thought of that horrible night when Yuri called him masturbating and hung up on his crying.

He cleared his throat and continued, promising himself he’d get the whole truth out, all of it. “I didn’t do anything. I was depressed; I was always either sleeping, or taking enough pills that I couldn’t feel anything while I was awake. I couldn’t even remember what it was like to _want_ something. I was just. Dead. I wasn’t a person, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to be with me.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Yuri breathed, tears in his eyes. “You shouldn’t have been alone. I would’ve come.”

“I couldn’t let you.” Now they were both crying and Otabek felt more out of control than he had since he started going to therapy. “I was so sick, Yura, and so ashamed of everything. I couldn’t walk until just a few weeks ago. I nearly overdosed once. I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

“What about me?” he shouted at him, bottom lip quivering. “I was alone, too, because of you. And I didn’t get to choose, you chose for me. I thought those two months were the worst, when we couldn’t talk to each other. And then you didn’t come see me at the fucking Olympics, like I didn’t matter to you at all. And you wouldn’t ever call me or text me. Do you know what that felt like? I felt like I meant so little to you that it only took two months for you to forget about me completely. Like you’d never loved me at all.” He was crying openly now, just as angry as when he’d shoved open the door. “You should’ve told me the fucking truth. Then I would’ve known why you were treating me like shit. I would’ve come and taken care of you, instead of us both being fucking miserable.”

“I’m sorry, Yura, I didn’t think about that.” And he hadn’t He hadn’t thought about what him shutting down would mean for Yuri. He had just known that it couldn’t be worse than him knowing the truth, but that wasn’t true and it wasn’t fair, and he didn’t know when he’d forgive himself for putting Yuri through all of that.

“You never get to lie to me again,” Yuri said, fiercely, like he did everything. He fisted his hand in Otabek’s shirt and pulled him close. “You will never shut me out like that again.”

“Yura, I’m different now,” Otabek cautioned him, wrapping one of his hands around his wrist, holding the narrow limb in his grip. “How do you even know you still want to be with me?”

“Maybe I don’t,” he said, and Otabek’s heart stopped beating. “But I should get to decide that. Not you.”

“Okay,” Otabek agreed too readily, agreeing to his own heartbreak too quickly. “Do you want to stay?”

“Oh, um,” Yuri said, blinking, the last of his angry tears falling to his cheeks as his eyes widened. “I don’t know, I guess so. I kind of just threw some stuff in a bag and ran to the airport.”

“You can stay here, if you want,” Otabek said, and it was foolish of him to offer, but the words were already out of his mouth. He had been starting to wonder if he would ever see Yuri again. Now that he was here, in Kazakhstan, in his apartment, he didn’t want him to go. Even if maybe he wasn’t ready for Yuri to really see all the ugly sides of his new life, he was willing to risk it. Even if it cost him everything.

“I want to, but…” Yuri trailed off, wiping the tears from his cheeks and sweeping back a few strands of hair nervously. “Are we together? Are we still broken up?” He looked at him from under his blond lashes. “Can I kiss you?”

“You can definitely kiss me,” Otabek breathed and he leaned desperately forward, sighing when Yuri met him halfway.

Kissing Yuri was both like they’d never been apart and like it was the first time all over again. The slide of his tongue was familiar, his rhythm a known constant, and Otabek knew exactly how to kiss him. And yet, the feeling of complete awe and hopeful disbelief was so much like the first time Yuri had let him kiss him, so many years ago.

It was two months and two days after the Olympics, and Otabek thought that maybe he had a new date from which to count the days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is all fluff!


	2. Chapter 2

It was the day after Yuri came back and Otabek woke up to find an angel in his bed. Maybe he shouldn’t have let Yuri sleep with him, maybe they were rushing back into things. But all they could do last night was hold tightly onto one another, as if the other might slip away if they weren’t careful. And to wake up to Yuri’s peaceful face, draped in escaped strands of hair like spun silk, was the greatest gift Otabek thought he would never receive.

“I’m still mad at you, you know,” Yuri murmured, startling Otabek out of his revere. He hadn’t known he was awake, as his face was still soft and his eyes were still closed. “I just happen to love you more than I hate you right now.”

“Okay,” Otabek agreed easily, leaning forward to press a kiss to his forehead. “I can live with that.”

He caught sight of a bruise on his shoulder, where the tshirt he was sleeping in was pulled low. It was the shape and size of a mouth, and it made Otabek’s stomach clench with pain. He brushed it with a thumb, and Yuri’s sleepy eyes jerked open.

“That, I’m, it’s just,” he stuttered, tugging his shirt collar back up to cover the mark.

“It’s fine,” Otabek lied, pulling his hands back to himself. “We were broken up.”

“I thought you were already with someone else,” Yuri said, looking contrite. “So I thought I should be ready to be with someone else.” He looked down at the pillow between them, cheeks pink. “I wasn’t. Every time I tried to be with someone, it was terrible. I hated it.” He looked at Otabek from underneath his thick, blond lashes. “You’re the only person I want to touch me,” he whispered, sultrily, sliding his palm up Otabek’s chest.

“I can’t, Yura,” Otabek said, pulling back apologetically. The thought of trying to find pleasure in his body again, of working through the levels of pain and mistrust he had in his body, was too much. And even if he could’ve felt that desire, he was certainly not ready for Yuri to see him naked. Not after how much his body had changed.

“What’s wrong?” Yuri asked, tugging at his shirt. Otabek detangled his hand and set it between them on the sheets.

“I, um, I’m not ready to do anything more than kissing,” he admitted, awkwardly, face red, hands suddenly sweaty.

“Otabek, we’ve had sex before,” Yuri said dryly, as if he could forget.

“I know,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck self-consciously. “But I’ve been through a lot and,” he tried to think of how his therapist had phrased it. “My relationship with my body isn’t particularly good right now, and so I haven’t been able to, you know,” he coughed, “get hard, or feel… sexy, or whatever.”

“I don’t understand,” Yuri said, and Otabek bit back a sigh of frustration. Then Yuri blinked at him and said, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

It had been so long since he’d even thought the word “beautiful,” that the idea that Yuri might still apply that to him, even with how different he must look since the last time he saw him, made tears well up as he struggled to comprehend exactly how he earned someone as perfect as Yuri. At seeing him cry, Yuri’s eyes widened with panic.

“Oh no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that, it just slipped out,” he rushed to say, arms quickly winding around his shoulders and pulling him in against his chest. Otabek fell against him like a starving man, looping his own arms around him and pressing his face into his shoulder. “Are you okay?” he asked, fingers threading through the back of his hair where his undercut had started to grow out. “Is this okay? Can I hold you like this?”

“Yeah,” he said gratefully, sniffing. He wrapped his own arms up around his back and trying not to be embarrassed by the tears soaking into the Russian’s shirt. “It’s just, everything has been so ugly for so long, and then you come back to me, and I just missed you so much.”

“Fuck, I missed you, too,” Yuri said, burying his words into the hair at the top of his head. “I shouldn’t have come onto you like that, that wasn’t fair. It’s just, waking up with you like this, it felt so much like it used to.” Otabek took a calming breath and brushed his hair back from his face tenderly, forgiveness evident.

“It feels like that for me, too,” he said, the casual intimacy so familiar even though it had been so long. “But things _are_ different. _I’m_ different,” he stressed. “I can’t do everything I used to. You might not like me like this.”

“There isn’t a world in which I don’t love you,” Yuri promised him fiercely before promptly blushing crimson at such a strong confession. Otabek found it utterly charming and he kissed his red cheeks.

“I’m not expecting this to be easy,” he confessed, pressing his forehead against his temple, fingers still in his hair. “I-I’m,” he stuttered, trying to give voice to his greatest fear. “I’m honestly expecting you to leave, eventually.”

Yuri shoved him back, furious and hurt, and Otabek tried to remember a time in which that wasn’t how a conversation with Yuri ended. For better or worse, though, Yuri was not ready to end this one.

“Why would you say that to me?” he spat. “Haven’t you pushed me away enough? Haven’t you made enough of my decisions for me?”

“I’m sorry,” he began, for so many things, but Yuri didn’t seem to want to hear about it.

“Can’t you just try?” he asked, but it didn’t sound like begging, it sounded accusatory. He’d heard this before. “For us, for me. Can’t you just _try_? Give us a chance again?”

“Yeah,” he said, coughing, his throat choked and tears in his eyes where he stared at Yuri like he was his reason to live. “I want to try.”

It was the day after Yuri came back and Otabek didn’t know if the person he was now was worthy of someone like Yuri, but he was willing to try to be.

 

 

It was one week after Yuri came back and Aruzhan was sitting in his living room, heel tapping rhythmically on the ground, arms crossed over her chest. She was glaring at Yuri who sat awkwardly on the couch across from her. Otabek rolled his eyes when he came back with tea and saw the sour look curling up her pretty face.

“Knock it off, Zhan, you love Yuri,” he said, pushing her mug into her hands and dropping a kiss onto her forehead. He limped back to the kitchen to grab Yuri’s, only having one free hand because of the cane. Yuri got up anyway and followed close to his back, so he handed the blond his cup and grabbed his own.

“Please don’t let me be a bitch to your sister,” Yuri murmured to him, pining him against the counter with his taller frame. “I don’t want to be, but with the way she’s glaring at me, I only have a few defense mechanisms, and most of them are obnoxious.”

“All of them are obnoxious,” Otabek teased him, leaning up to kiss the tip of his nose. “Thanks for worrying about it though.”

“Why is she so mad at me?” Yuri asked, a look of genuine hurt puckering his brow, underneath the alpha posturing. “Last time I was here, we were friends, she and Sezim both liked me.”

“Things are different now,” Otabek said softly. He’d said it so much in the few days Yuri had been here. ‘Why did the tea move cabinets?’, ‘What happened to your coffee table?’, ‘When did you get a new phone?’ So many things were different, Yuri was still learning the logistics of his new life.

“I’m not different,” Yuri pouted, sipping out of his cup and glaring at the back of Aruzhan’s head. Otabek just chuckled and kissed his shoulder as he made his slow way back to the couch. Yuri stayed with him step by step and sat close beside him.

“What’s your problem?” Yuri finally asked after a few more tense moments of silence. She regarded him coolly, quirking her brow like he was a fool to even ask. “I thought he was cheating on me, it was justified,” he defended himself from the unspoken accusation, chin jutting out even as his shoulders hunched in around him.

“I don’t blame you for that,” she said, though her arms stayed crossed and her features stayed hard. “He was a terrible boyfriend.”

“So what’s your problem?”

“I don’t think you two should be together,” she said, and though she leveled Yuri with a seemingly impassive glare, Otabek could see indecision and regret in her face. “You have too much power over him.”

“What does that even mean?” Yuri asked exasperatedly at the same time Otabek said a warning, “Aruzhan, don’t.”

“What happens if you break up again, huh?” she asked, looking at her brother sharply. “Will you do it again?”

“Do what?” Yuri asked, and was ignored.

“I'm better now,” Otabek said, forcing himself to believe it.

“What if you get worse again? And he gets sick of it and leaves?” Aruzhan pushed, not letting up. “Are you going to try again?”

“Try what?” Yuri asked, raising his voice, angry and confused. “What are you guys talking about?” Aruzhan opened her mouth and Otabek shot her a hard look.

“It doesn’t matter,” he hurried to say, but he saw the look in her eyes and knew she was going to do it anyway.

“He overdosed because of you,” Aruzhan said matter-of-factly. “He almost died.”

“That’s not fair,” Otabek interjected, but it was too late, the damage was done. Yuri was looking at him with wide, swimming eyes, his mouth hanging open in shock. He looked so scared. Otabek looked down and his pale, bony hands were shaking.

“You broke up with him,” Aruzhan continued, seeing him vulnerable and capitalizing on it. “And he tried to kill himself.”

“I didn’t,” he said earnestly, taking Yuri’s hands and looking at him beseechingly. “I didn’t try to kill myself, it was an accident.”

“You don’t finish a whole bottle of pills on accident,” his sister said, and her voice had softened. Tears were leaking out of Yuri’s eyes, and when Otabek turned to glare at her, her face was sadly soft, like she hadn’t enjoyed inflicting this on him. Nonetheless, she’d done it.

“I just wanted to sleep,” he insisted, the same thing he’d been telling her, himself, his therapist, everyone.

“You spent weeks wanting to die, Beks,” his sister said softly. “Yuri gave you a reason. I don’t ever want him to be able to do that to you again. I’m sorry, Yuri,” she directed towards him. “But I don’t ever want to be that close to losing my brother again.”

The hand that wasn’t folded between Otabek’s was covering Yuri’s mouth as he cried, fat, silent tears rolling over his cheeks. His shoulders shook and Otabek pulled him in, letting him hide his face against his neck. He shuddered, his hands coming up to grip onto Otabek’s shirt tightly, like he was afraid to ever let him go again.

“I’m better now, I promise,” he said, whispering into Yuri’s hair. He said it again, looking over his head to his sister. She wasn’t looking at him, she was staring resolutely to the side, but Otabek could see her eyes were wet, too. “I promise,” he said again, to both of them. “I won’t ever do it again. I was sick, I wasn’t myself.” Aruzhan wiped her face brusquely, still not looking at him. “Zhan,” he said, and she turned her head further away, ineffectively hiding her tears. “I won’t.”

“You scared the shit out of me,” she said accusatorily. “You can’t ever do that again.”

“I won’t,” he promised. “Yuri or no Yuri, I’m better now. I won’t do it again.”

Yuri couldn’t seem to stop crying, though Otabek could feel him holding his breath in an effort to get himself under control. It hadn’t worked, and it just made each new heave of his chest louder and stronger. Otabek ran hands down his back and murmured soothingly into his ear. It didn’t seem to help, and when Yuri’s breath started coming faster and less controlled, Otabek got worried. He squeezed his hand around his neck and felt his pulse thundering under his skin.

“Yura, it’s okay,” he said, wrapping the boy up tighter in his arms. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Yuri, I’m sorry,” Aruzhan said, and Otabek believed her, but he also knew she’d do it again. She liked Yuri, but she loved Otabek and would always put him first.

“Could you give us a minute?” he asked her, and she nodded, making her way to the balcony, wiping her face again and again as tears continued to fall. Otabek was really tired of making people cry.

When the door closed behind her, Otabek grabbed Yuri by the chin and pulled his head up from his chest to meet his eye. With his other hand, he flattened his hand to his chest and took deep breaths.

“Breathe, kitten, just breathe,” Otabek coached gently, and after a couple minutes of steady contact, Yuri began to calm down. Once he was no longer hyperventilating though, his sobs became fuller and wetter.

“Fuck you,” were the first things he said, and Otabek had to laugh. Yuri struck him weakly in the chest and Otabek didn’t put up any defense. “How fucking dare you,” he shouted at him. “How could you do that to me?”

“I’m sorry,” Otabek said, sobering. “You said you never wanted to hear from me again.”

“So you tried to die?” Yuri’s face was red with tears and fury.

“I didn’t,” Otabek insisted, holding tight to that. “It just hurt so much, so I did the only thing I had been doing for weeks and I took more drugs until it stopped. But because it was my heart that hurt, well,” he trailed off. He didn’t like thinking about how close he’d gotten. How easily he’d fallen asleep, accepting that he might not wake up.

“But,” he said, tucking blond hair behind flushed ears. “That was when I decided to get better. You breaking up with me was _why_ I decided that I needed to get clean, why I needed to go to therapy, why I needed to figure out how to be _me_ again.”

“I hate that I did that to you,” Yuri wheezed, eyes squeezed tightly shut, lashes a shade darker from the tears clinging to them. “I can’t believe I almost lost you. It’s my fault.”

“It’s not,” Otabek said harshly, shaking Yuri where he held him. “It’s not your fault. I was sick. You didn’t know.”

“I should’ve come to see you,” Yuri insisted, staring at him with wide eyes. “I thought about it so many times. First I wanted to come surprise you. Then, when I thought you were with someone else, I wanted to catch you, or confront you, or something. I should’ve just gotten on the plane.”

“I told you not to,” Otabek said, soothing down his hair again, restlessly trying to soothe Yuri, to keep him from panicking again.

“I should’ve. I should’ve come to see you. Then I would’ve known. We would’ve been together. I could’ve helped you.” Yuri hung his head. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t come sooner.”

“Stop it,” Otabek said, voice flaring with anger. “It’s not your fault. It wasn’t fair of Aruzhan to make it sound like it was your fault, and it isn’t fair of you to blame yourself. It was me. I was sick and I was dumb and I won’t ever do anything like that again.” He pulled Yuri to his chest and held him tightly, feeling his wiry-thin arms wrap around him in turn. “I’m never letting go,” Otabek promised him. “Not of you, not of this,” he pressed his words into hair that smelled like blueberries. “Not of me. Not again.”

It was one week after Yuri came back, and Otabek was startlingly reminded of how far he’d come, and how much more was still waiting for him.

 

 

It was two weeks after Yuri came back and Sabine was eyeing him warily.

“Why haven’t you been sleeping?” she asked, and Otabek didn’t ask how she knew he hadn’t been sleeping as well. He had light circles under his eyes and had been yawning through training. He smiled though, through his tired eyes, and his flushed cheeks blushed further.

“I’m a light sleeper,” he said demurely, looking at her out of the side of his eye. “When someone else is in bed with me.”

“Oh,” she said, looking shocked, blinking rapidly. Her cheeks flushed and with as close as they’d grown, he was surprised that that gentle implication could embarrass her. She looked down and fiddled with her clipboard, shrugging her shoulders and asking casually, “You met someone?”

“My ex,” he said, feeling bad that he could ever have cause to describe Yuri as such. “We’re trying again.” He smiled at her, letting her know it was a good thing. She frowned anyway, suddenly looking frustrated as she pushed her hair back off her forehead, smoothing down her ponytail.

“Are you sure that’s smart, Bek?”

“He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said with certainty, smiling. She was still frowning, and he felt guilty, for her worry over him. “Do you want to meet him?” he asked impulsively. They were two of the most important people in his life; they should know one another. He told her so and it just turned her frown into a bittersweet sort of smile.

“Don’t go through the trouble,” she said, trying to get out of it.

“He’s waiting in the lobby for me,” he said. “I want to introduce you.” Otabek was proud of his progress, nearly walking without the cane, and no one knew the full picture of his recovery better than Sabine did. Some selfish, proud part of him wanted Yuri to know that too. Even as weak as he was, he was still so far from where he’d been.

“Okay,” she finally consented, looking like she already regretted it. He didn’t know why. Even when they were apart, he’d had nothing but sweet things to say about Yuri.

Introducing them proved more awkward than he’d expected.

Yuri was clearly jealous that she had been able to be there for Otabek when he was not. Sabine was politely guarded, treating Yuri with fake smiles and cheap small talk in Russian, probably trying to assess him and see if he would really break Otabek’s heart twice. It was probably very wrong, but Otabek couldn’t help but smile, at having two people who cared about him so fiercely. Though it was more than a little forced and uncomfortable, Otabek still left with a smile on his face, holding Yuri’s hand when they said their goodbyes and walked towards the car.

He’d just settled into the seat of the car they’d borrowed from his family when Yuri turned and gave him a flat expression.

“When were you going to tell me your physical therapist is in love with you?”

“What?” Otabek exclaimed, looking back at the clinic and then back to Yuri’s green, gleaming gaze.

“She’s totally in love with you. How could you have missed that?”

“She is not in love with me,” Otabek retorted with a snorting laugh. “She has seen me through the very worst moments of my life. She’d seen me with incisions still seeping, smelling like death. She’s seen me when I was in withdrawal. Trust me, there’s no way she’s in love with me. She’s seen me at my worst.”

“That’s why she loves you,” Yuri said with an air of obviousness, though his voice was surprisingly soft. “She knows exactly how strong you are.”

Otabek’s jaw snapped closed at that, halfway through the sentence, “But how could someone love me after all of that?” Still, he’d said enough for Yuri to glare at him.

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” he spat at him, angrily putting the car in gear. “That’s my fucking boyfriend you’re talking about, you better watch your mouth.” He pulled onto the street and reached over to wrap Otabek’s hand in a strong grip. “And you can tell her to back the fuck off. I’m never letting go of you again. She can keep dreaming.”

It was two weeks after Yuri came back and Otabek wondered if he’d been worth being loved this whole time.

 

 

It was three weeks after Yuri came back when he saw him naked for the first time.

Not the first time ever, of course. Otabek had been naked for Yuri every type of way before; stalking slowly to a sexy song, kneeling on the kitchen floor, spread out sluttily underneath him, or holding him up for a rough fuck, Yuri had done it all with him.

But this was the first time since the accident. The first time since the surgeries, the depression, the drugs, more surgeries, the withdrawal, and still more lingering days of darkness. He knew his body didn’t look the same. He knew his stomach was sunken and hollow where before it had been hard and grooved. He knew his thighs were thinner now, his hips weak and uneven. He knew his knee was a mess, gnarled silver scars overlaid with fresher red ones, the bolt holes dotting his thigh and calf, the asymmetry of his joints. He knew his skin was more ashen and his hair was still limp, he knew he bruised easier now and was clumsier. Even though he was healing well, he still looked sick, still shook sometimes, still had trouble getting around. He knew what he looked like.

So when Yuri barged into the bathroom door when he was getting out of the shower, and his jaw dropped in shock, Otabek apologized.

“I’m sorry,” he rushed, face burned and heart pounding with sickening shame, hastily scrambling to grab his towel and hold it in front of him. “I know it’s not, um,” he mumbled, stomach going sour as he anticipated the awkward disappoint to come. Yuri was still as gorgeous as ever; there was no part of Otabek’s body that he would still want, not anymore.

“No, it’s okay,” Yuri said, taking fast steps over to him, fast enough that Otabek couldn’t back away at the same pace, even though he hadn’t used his cane much in the last week. “It’s just,” he said, trailing off, looking at where the dark blue towel covered him, clutched against his chest and dangling longways in front of him like a shield.

“I know,” Otabek said, looking staunchly over Yuri’s shoulder, not wanting to see the guilty disgust in his eyes.

“You don’t know,” Yuri breathed, reaching forward and bunching his hand in the towel, not pulling it away but holding on. “You don’t know how good you look to me.”

“Yuri, I don’t,” he began, blushing furiously, all the way up to the tips of his ears.

“Shut up,” Yuri said, not unkindly, dipping his head forward to press a kiss to his lips, a light one. “You might not find yourself sexy right now, but I still think you’re the most beautiful thing in the world.” With that he slipped around him, leaving Otabek standing in shocked silence as he grabbed his phone from where he’d left it next to the toilet. “And besides,” he said, walking back towards him, one hand sliding indulgently down his naked back. “Your ass is still amazing.” Otabek gaped at him as he left the bathroom, his asscheek still stinging from a hard slap, and his dick twitching under the towel for the first time in months.

It was three weeks after Yuri came back and Otabek looked down at his own dick like he’d forgotten it was there.

 

It was a month after Yuri came back and Otabek took him to therapy with him.

His therapist cautioned him that she wasn’t a couple’s therapist, but Otabek wanted a joint session anyway. Yuri wasn’t going anywhere. He’d said it for weeks and weeks, and now, a month in, Otabek truly wanted to believe it. And if Yuri wasn’t going anywhere, that meant that Otabek had to give him the whole truth.

He didn’t think he’d been hiding anything from him. In fact, if anything, he’d been overexposing him, throwing all of the ugly and terrible aspects of his life at the younger boy, in a passive attempt to drive him away, to prove how much better off he might be without him. But Yuri stayed. Because he loved him, and because he wanted to, and because it was his choice and he was choosing Otabek, in whatever form he was being offered.

But they still hadn’t really been able to talk about the future. They were fighting so hard to just be in the present together, that Otabek worried that Yuri might not be thinking about how different their future would look, compared to what they might have imagined before.

So they went to therapy together. She asked them to talk about their hopes and fears and what they thought might be holding them apart. For Otabek, he stared between his knees, one whole, one ruined, and confessed that he thought he’d never be able to keep up with Yuri, and that once he got tired of trudging along by his side, he’d leave him behind.

Yuri had sunk back into the couch, arms crossed over his chest, snarl put firmly in place as he confessed that he thought that Otabek didn’t love him as much as he loved Otabek because Otabek kept talking about him leaving, and planning futures without him, and not believing him when he said that he was here forever. Yuri said that if Otabek loved him as much as _he_ loved him then he would stop treating him like an idea and start treating him like a person, one that wouldn’t get bored and bail when times got tough. Yuri admitted, through quiet tears rolling along his frowning face, that every time Otabek gave him a way out, he felt more and more rejected, like one day Otabek would actually hold the door open and tell him he wasn’t good enough. He said that some days he felt like Otabek was trying to get rid of him, to punish him for leaving him in the first place.

Otabek lashed out with arms like ropes and drug Yuri across the couch into his chest. He held him firmly, kissed him wetly, and didn’t pay any attention to the way his therapist looked politely away. Thumbing over the tear marks on his cheeks, Otabek whispered endless apologies into his mouth. Yuri murmured back with violent threats and promises, pledges to kick his ass and marry the shit out of him in equal measure.

His therapist offered a few words about the importance of communication and expectations in a relationship and then let them go early. They went home red-eyed but smiling, fingers tied together like knots in a sail.

It was a month after Yuri came back and Otabek knew wherever he went next, they’d be going together.

 

 

It was five weeks after Yuri came back when Otabek finally let him touch him.

Splayed out on their bed, naked except for the pillow he held tightly over his face, Otabek let himself be looked at. He couldn’t watch. Couldn’t see the desire melt away to uncertainty as Yuri fully realized how his body had changed, how touching him wouldn’t feel the same. So he drug the pillow that smelled like blueberry and violet shampoo over his shame-reddened face and let Yuri carefully settle himself between his knees.

He touched him gently, likely very away that he was still soft, just gentle fingertips trailing all over his skin. Otabek held his breath when Yuri dropped kisses onto his chest, though he exhaled in a rush when his tongue curled lazily around a nipple. He twitched and jumped when fingertips landed in unexpected places, like the underside of his arms, the softness of his stomach, the scars on his leg.

Yuri had never been one for dirty talk, always claiming that it made him feel dumb and foolish, so when praise and pretty words started falling from his lips, Otabek thought it was a cruel trap. But when Yuri’s voice cracked, and he leaned down to bury his face in Otabek’s shoulder, and he felt the wet weight of his hard cock brush his thigh, he allowed himself the possibility that maybe Yuri meant every word.

“I can’t believe I get to have you again,” he’d said, rubbing the flats of his palms over his nipples. “I never thought I’d be this lucky, _again_.” He kissed each rib on one side. “You’re the kind of miracle even a saint would only get once.” He kissed the other side, like each rib was the bar of a xylophone and he wanted to hear every one of Otabek’s sighs. “I have never done anything to deserve something as perfect as you.”

Otabek was glad for the pillow when tears started leaking from his tightly shut eyes. He cried easier now, and when Yuri wrapped his hand around the first erection he’d had since his accident, it wasn’t a moan but a sob that he released.

His body was already shaking when Yuri stroked him slowly, trailing open-mouthed, sloppy kisses from the inside of his thigh all the way to the pocked scarring of his ravaged knee. Otabek flinched away from his gentle touch, so Yuri buried his face in his ass instead, pushing his good leg up into the air so he could twist his tongue into his hole and make Otabek’s body jerk for a completely pleasurable reason.

His body might have been different, but Yuri still knew how to take him apart. Before long Otabek had cast the pillow aside to gasp harshly to the ceiling, stomach convulsing as he whispered a fast “fuck, fuck, fuck,” spilling over himself and Yuri’s long-fingered hand. His partner surged up between his thighs, kissing his dry and panting mouth as he brought himself off in a dozen strokes over his own spent cock, adding to the substantial mess on his skin.

When the tears had dried and the come was cold, Otabek nudged him out of his orgasmic haze.

“You need to clean up,” he mumbled sleepily. “I have a bad leg.”

“That excuse won’t work forever,” Yuri complained, but smacked a kiss on his lips anyway on his way out of the bed. “Once we’re old and both have bad bones we’ll have to take turns again.”

It was five weeks after Yuri came back and Otabek thought about being old and creaky, instead of young and pained, and actually looked forward to the rest of his life.

 

 

It was two months after Yuri came back and Otabek was having the most awkward conversation of his life.

“You’re asking me,” Sabine said slowly, an eyebrow quirked in abject disbelief, “for advice. About sex positions.”

Otabek just nodded resolutely, wishing his cheeks weren't flushed quite so red.

“To use with your boyfriend,” Sabine clarified, and at least her cheeks were pink, too. Otabek nodded again and she shook her head. She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again, putting down her clipboard so she could tighten her ponytail. “I mean, goddamn, Bek, hasn’t he been here for like two months already? Are you asking me now because you’ve hurt yourself?”

“No,” he huffed, crossing his arms. “We just started, again, with that stuff.” She gave him a look like she thought he was lying to her. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. “I, uh, couldn’t so anything, like that, until a few weeks ago. I just,” he waved a hand vaguely around his waist. “Couldn’t.”

“Oh,” she said, picking her board up again and pretending to be engrossed in something on it. “So, you didn’t feel any attraction? To anyone?"

“Not since the accident,” he admitted, playing with the hem of his shorts where they rested above his bad knee.

“But now?” she said leadingly. He nodded, eyebrows raised, thinking of the way Yuri still looked at him like he was starving. Sabine blew a strand of hair out of his face and sighed. “Promise me you haven’t hurt yourself and didn’t tell me?” Otabek shook his head, but had a little bit more of a smile on his face.

“We’ve been doing other stuff,” he said, the tips of his ears red. “Things that definitely won’t hurt my knee.” He thought about a few nights before, his knees slung over Yuri’s shoulders, the bad leg carefully held steady around the thigh while Yuri fucked him hard.

“God, this is too much information,” Sabine groaned, burying her face in her hand. “But I have to ask,” she kept her face covered so they didn’t have to look at each other. “Will you need advice for, um, both sides of things?” she said, and her voice definitely cracked but they collectively agreed to ignore it.

“Oh, um,” Otabek said, realizing most of her clientele was probably straight and the roles might have been a little more obvious. “I don’t think so. We’ve got one half of that worked out pretty well, to keep my knee safe. But, um, I think he’s really starting to miss the other half.”

“Oh my god,” she groaned, blushing all the way down to the line of her sports bra. “That doesn’t actually tell me which half you need instruction on,” she squeaked. “That just gives me far more information than I ever needed to know.”

“Right,” he said, and wow, was it incredibly hot in the gym today. “I need to know how to, um, top. Safely.”

“Motherfucker,” he heard her mumble to herself. “I’m a good person, I don’t deserve this.” She rubbed her hand over her face and looked at him without actually making eye contact. “Alright, I’m a professional,” she affirmed herself. “Let’s teach you how to fuck.”

Otabek was relieved to know that this was a common question in physical therapy, and Sabine had plenty of tricks and tips for how to fuck comfortably with a busted joint. It was only after she’d guided him through a few different positions and motions that her face really got red. By the end of the session, they were both so red and clammy, they looked like they’d just had the hardest work out of their lives. Yuri’s eyebrows climbed into his hairline when they walked back out into the lobby, and though Sabine had warmed up to Yuri over time, she couldn’t even look at him. She waved a vague goodbye and scurried back to her office, where she would probably hyperventilate for a few minutes before her next client arrived.

As horrifying as the experience had been, it certainly proved useful.

Otabek had been able to tell the other morning, when Yuri had sunk down on his cock. A single line of frustration clung stubbornly between his brows as he did all the work of fucking himself, for the first time probably ever. Before, when Yuri would ride him, Otabek would always get him off by trapping his hips in his hands and fucking up into him. Otabek knew that when Yuri bottomed, he wanted to get it hard and fast and sometimes a little rough. And the more Yuri fucked _him_ like that, the more he could tell that the other boy was getting desperate for it himself.

Otabek felt a little bad about waiting another day to try anything out, but the awkwardness of practicing with his trainer, who might’ve had a crush on him at one point, was still so traumatic that he couldn’t get comfortable enough to do anything that night. But the next day, he was ready.

The look on Yuri’s face, when Otabek flipped him onto his stomach and yanked his hips up was worth every agonizing moment with Sabine. He went from shocked to boneless in an instant, back flexible enough that his chest melted to the bed as Otabek held his hips up at groin level. He slipped two fingers into him while making sure his knees were arranged properly. Yuri’s eyes fluttered shut as he found his prostate.

“Don’t tease me,” Yuri moaned, hands gripping the sheet. “Is it safe for you to really fuck me? I mean _really_ fuck me?”

“Yeah,” Otabek sighed, letting his breath coast down the sharp curve of his back. “Yeah, I can do it.”

“Fuck, yes, please,” Yuri begged, angling his hips up even more. “I mean, please don’t hurt yourself. But also, yes, please, fuck me good.”

Otabek groaned and pushed in a third finger and more lube, bringing his the foot of his left leg to rest flat on the bed, even with Yuri’s side. After waiting for the impatient wiggle Yuri always did when he decided he was ready, Otabek set his foot, remembering the careful advice that that leg was purely for balance. He slicked himself and pressed in, losing his breath at the feeling of Yuri wrapping around him so tightly.

“Fuck,” he gasped, fingers digging into the meat of Yuri’s ass.

“Yeah,” Yuri sighed, rocking his hips back to take more of him. Otabek started a slow roll of his hips, getting used to the movement in this position, asking Yuri to slide his knees out farther, looking for that perfect angle. He knew he found it when Yuri sucked in a hard breath through his teeth, eyes squeezing shut.

“Good?” Otabek asked, already panting, already beading with sweat.

“Yeah, there,” he answered, hands getting a good grip on the sheets. “Now fuck me hard.”

It was two months after Yuri came back, and Otabek grinned wolfishly and did as he was told.

 

 

It was two and a half months after Yuri came back and he had to leave again.

There was only so long he could take off of training, and he was already behind. Viktor was threatening to drop him if he didn’t return to Russia, so he had to go. He also had to take Otabek with him.

They’d gotten in their first screaming match in weeks, Yuri threatening to retire and stay in Kazakhstan, Otabek accusing him of not wanting some washed up veteran crowding his kiss and cry. Both of them were unfair and after cooling down they talked it out, glaring at each other over sweet cups of tea. Yuri worried that it would hurt Otabek too much to be around skating and still not be able to be on the ice. Otabek worried that Yuri thought he was still too slow to keep up, too delicate to live a busy, St. Petersburg life. They were both right and wrong in parts, and they compromised. They would return to Russia together, on the condition that Otabek started working on his music career again, beginning with mixing all of the pieces for Yuri’s programs.

Viktor wasn’t thrilled, dramatically exclaiming about having his artistic fire snuffed out by rude rock music, but Otabek could tell he was overjoyed to have Yuri back with him. Katsuki and Viktor both casually resented him for making Yuri so miserable towards the end of their relationship, but Otabek didn’t begrudge them that fatherly right. They also didn’t pity him or complain when he had to sit down or walk slower. They accepted him by rote and Otabek wondered if there was something about Yuri’s ability to get adopted everywhere he went that was so strong it extended to tag-alongs as well. When he voiced this to Yuri, he got flicked in the face for ever considering himself just a “tag-along.”

It was hard, being in a rink and not being tied into skates, balancing on blades and tearing through the freezing air. It made something in his chest ache and scream, but watching Yuri on the ice soothed the hurt. He moved like water through a river, graceful and crashing, a stillness on the surface with a deadly swiftness just beneath. He took Otabek’s breath away and even if he had two good knees, they’d still be just as weak. He would never get tired of watching that boy create beautiful works of art.

And after, at home in their tiny, second floor apartment, Yuri would drop an ice pack on Otabek's knee and hold it there with his feet, or his ankle, or whatever part of him ached from a hard practice. They would talk music and choreography; they’d make a healthy dinner and watch shitty TV. They’d kiss with wine flavored tongues and fall asleep with pinkies entwined.

It was two and a half months after Yuri came back and it took no time at all to realize that home was wherever he could find blond hairs stuck to the walls of his shower and the smell of ice and steel in his nose.

 

 

It was three months after Yuri came back and Otabek still had days where he woke up and resolutely refused to be anything but miserable. There were still days where, if he were brutally honest with himself, he wished he hadn’t woken up at all. Days where the dark thoughts he'd skated away from all his life caught up to him and he had nowhere to hide. There were days where his leg ached like a bitch and his temper was short and he started arguments just to feel a flush in his face again. There were days where his hands would shake and his mouth would fill with spit and he _longed_ for the drugs. Days where his body promised that even a little taste would be enough and he’d remember exactly why he hadn’t wanted to stop.

But there were soft days too. And there were regular days in which nothing remarkable happened at all. There were late mornings where he and Yuri did laundry together after making a sticky mess of the sheets, and there were early nights where they fell asleep after quietly reading on their phones in bed.

There were bad days when he had to go to appointments and run errands and pretend not to be clawing his way through a depressive fog, and there were good days when he had nothing to do and felt restless in his skin because he had plenty of energy and nothing to spend it on.

It was three months after Yuri came back, and no days were the same but they weren’t all unique and Otabek thought that maybe this was what settling into a new life felt like.

 

 

It was four months after Yuri came back and the competition season was nearing. Yuri had been working himself to the bone to be ready in time and Otabek tried not to feel guilty for all those weeks spent in Almaty learning how to be a couple again. Tensions were high, but Viktor and Otabek both felt confident in the work their Yuri had put in. He was never a disappointment, he didn’t know how to be, everything he did was with every bit of his heart.

The interviewers always came for Yuri but saved a few questions for Otabek.

They asked him what it was like, to be at the ice but not on it. They asked if he missed it, as if they didn’t know the answer.

Of course he missed it. He missed it like astronauts miss weightlessness, like parents never stop missing grandparents, like a fruit always wants to be a tree. He missed it so much he felt as though the metal in his body might one day pour out of the soles of his feet and make new skates all his own. He didn’t need bones anyway, not if he could fly again.

But saying too much about that always made his tiger red-faced and tetchy, so Otabek kept it simple in front of the camera, and gave the rest only to Yuri, like he did almost all other things. It was only when they were alone, when Otabek would curl up next to him and rest his head on his shoulder and tell him how much he missed feeling beautiful, how much he missed the feeling of _flying_. Yuri would comb his fingers through his hair and tell him to strap on some skates, saying that he’d hold his hands like Viktor did for him when he was just a toddler and he would never let him fall.

It was four months after Yuri came back, and Otabek dreamt of swans and glaciers and wings of steel.

 

 

It was six months after Yuri came back and Otabek woke up early.

His knee ached with a gentle nudging, a shadow of the agony he used to feel that was only dark enough to remind him of how far he’d come. It was almost comforting, a dull little reminder of the cost of being alive, the privilege of a beating heart. He woke up early and carefully removed one of Yuri’s snow-pale limbs from around his waist, sneaking out of bed without waking the kitten. He relished in quiet footsteps, his body well enough to tiptoe, his footfalls even and hushed.

He dressed warmly, a brace wrapped around his knee, and slipped out of the apartment, breathing in the St. Petersburg air in the still dark morning. The sun had not yet peaked up over the horizon, and Otabek took his time walking along the mostly empty streets. By the time he made it to the rink, his knee was pleasantly stretched and warmed up, the lingering stiffness of lying still giving way to the grateful heat of movement and strength.

He was let into the rink without question, just a quiet nod from the staffer and an unsubtle hint as to where he might find a pair of skates to his liking. He knew Yuri had brought his skates to the rink when they’d first moved back, had them locked up safely in the back so they’d always be there if he ever wanted them again.

Tying his feet back into those skates felt as natural as breathing. The laces slid between his fingers with the same purpose that blood pounded through his veins. The leather wrapped around his ankle and the swell of his calf, cupping it like Yura did when he felt like kissing him all over. Even without the guards, his first step felt steady, and he marveled at how different the world looked from an inch and a half higher off the ground. He breathed deeply and tasted clouds.

The first scrape of the ice under him brought quiet, peaceful tears to his eyes, and he moved in easy, careful circles. A single sob hitched its way out of his throat but the rink welcomed it, making room for it on the ice to skate alongside him. He cried easier now, but the ice didn’t care. He skated until his nose was red from the cold and his eyelashes were clumped wetly together and he was laughing and laughing.

He saw Yuri burst through the doors, looking wild and scared and hopeful and then he was crying, too. Otabek made his slow but smooth way to the boards and leaned over to accept a desperate kiss.

“I’m so happy for you,” Yuri breathed against his cheek, hands fisted in his overgrown hair.

“Come skate with me,” was all Otabek could say, for no other words were the exact right shape to fit through the smile on his face. Except for “I love you,” which he said next, as soon as the next set of blade kissed the ice.

They held hands, skating slowly and letting weeks and months of soreness and sadness bleed into the ice and sliding peacefully forward into a future full of opportunities and love.

It was six months after Yuri came back, ten months after the accident, and Otabek tasted ice on his tongue, felt happiness in his chest and held the only thing he could never lose in the palm of his hand.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can follow me on tumblr if you want more of my trash existence. I'm [ definitelynotadulting ](http://definitelynotadulting.tumblr.com/)


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